


now all my elephants are in the room

by raewastaken (IWriteLove)



Series: second guessing games [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Underage Relationship(s), M/M, Poetry as a Plot Device, Rape/Non-con Elements, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-18 23:15:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10627179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IWriteLove/pseuds/raewastaken
Summary: "Fire burns bright like the sun, and I’ve fallen for blinding rays. I never considered myself Icarus, until I was crashing into the waves."orNursey is falling for Dex, and he knows there's some things he needs to air out before he can take the jump.





	

**Author's Note:**

> bois!!!! 
> 
> i know its been months but ive been in a slump and i finally pulled myself out of the depths of writers block hell to finish this up. that newest update helped a fuck ton too (omg there gonna be bunking together aaaa). im glad too bcus i missed my trans son nursey!!! i missed writing
> 
> this fic takes place AFTER the party where dex informs nursey that top surgery is a thing in the first fic ([found here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7690525)), but before nursey actually gets his top surgery at the end. for this to make a bit more sense, i recommend you go read that one first, just mind the warnings at the beginning!! and this fic (probably hopefully) wont be the last you see of this specific trans nursey bcus i love trans nursey and want to write more.

William J Poindexter  _ continues _ to be a fucking enigma.

Like snow that melts at the sunlight of spring, or something just as poetic and  _ pretentious _ (he can hear Dex saying in his head), Nursey is drawn slowly into Dex’s orbit, bit by bit. After the Haus party where they had bumped shoulders and Dex supplied the best piece of knowledge Nursey had ever been given, Nursey finds himself pulled in by gravity to Dex’s side. It comes easier, too, to not get irrationally frustrated and make snappy comments at every chance, instead falling back on chirps and jabs that have no heat, no malice behind them, that are paired with smiles and laughs. And Dex looks good when he laughs, too; pink cheeks that bring out his freckles, amber eyes that twinkle and shine, a lopsided smile that shows off teeth. Nursey only half heartedly tries to shove the emotion in his chest down, returns the smiles and the heat on his face that he knows won’t show on his skin, not like it does on Dex’s. There’s a familiarity to it, a wave of nostalgia, something that drums in his fingers and always makes him jot down some half-scribbled series of words on his arm before he forgets.

“When are all your exams again?” Dex asks, sipping his black coffee and looking up at Nursey. Midterms and the official end of their first semester at Samwell are fast approaching, leaving a stressed tension between everyone on the team, including the two of them. They find a good middle ground with caffeine and time set aside to study together in comfortable silence, though, so it curves the edge off all the gritted teeth and snapped replies. Coming to Annie’s became an unofficial ritual for them now, one that Nursey didn’t mind. Part of him wanted it to be a thing, even after the holidays, but he didn’t know if Dex would want to put up with him more than he had been. Nursey always felt like one of those “last case scenarios” for Dex. The class that was a backup for three others. Plan C, in case all others failed.

Nursey just hums, though, stuffing his thoughts back, pen at work on paper writing out the project due for his English class. “Um… English on Tuesday? That mandatory science class they made me take is the next morning. Math is on... Wednesday afternoon? Uh-”

“Just send me a copy of your schedule when you get a chance,” Dex says with a shake of his head, his focus going back to his laptop, fingers typing away at the keys. “I forgot you’re so forgetful.”

“That’s ironic,” Nursey throws back, smirking when Dex shoots him a glare, before he puts his nose back into his poetry, scribbling a poem off in the margins of his work instead of doing the project like he’s supposed to. He’s halfway through a line about stars and the night sky, when the nostalgia hits him and he freezes over the pages, not daring to look up at Dex again.

It’s like Tate; the easy chirping, the laughter and smiles, how Nursey melts so easily under his attention and almost craves it. He watches Dex on the ice in a similar way he did with Tate, feels a surge in his chest anytime Dex meets his eyes that he’s felt before, recognizes how his mind works in long analogies with flowery words and subtle hints. It’s the comfortable, the familiar heat haze of summer that was like being asleep, how Dex sometimes locked eyes with him across the rink and they had the same kind of silent conversation Nursey had always had with Tate;  _ I’ve got your back, do what you need _ . It feels like the avalanche on a mountain that smothers him at the bottom when it crashes against him. He stutters his hand still, feeling Dex’s eyes on him again, and he knows what look he’s got on his face when he speaks. “Are you alright there, Nurse?”

_ No _ , is the honest answer on the tip of his tongue, one that vibrates under his skin, the one that wants to spill it all to Dex, because he hasn’t, and he can’t. The team knows about his depression, about his absent parents, about the battle with his dysphoria, about that dark corner of his mind he goes sometimes when he’s feeling extra self deprecating. He’s giving them hints, clues, little tidbits of how bad it was at Andover, and Nursey did tell Chowder about the suicide attempt. But none of them know about Tate, none of them know the intimate details of that night, about the alcohol/antidepressants cocktail in his head, about the way he panicked and felt sick when Tate had his hand on him through the cotton of his underwear, how he was on the edge of it being so, so much worse for himself. He sometimes gets caught up in his own brain and half thinks about how it would have been if Nursey didn’t have the strength to push Tate off of him, and feels that flip of nausea and has to stop himself. Tate had been a mental block holding him back from so much since he was fifteen, and it was the only one he couldn’t overcome. And having all those familiar feelings bubbling in his stomach and chest, and in the tips of his fingers and under his skin about Dex - the same ones he had felt about Tate - makes him feel sick, and makes him panic.

Dex is still looking at him, waiting for him to answer, and Nursey just closes his journal and nods, stuffing his things in his backpack. “Yeah,” he mumbles. “I’m just not feeling well, I guess. I’ll see you at the Haus?”

He looks taken back for a moment, before his expression softens in a way he didn’t think Dex could be soft, and nods. “Yeah. Sure. I’ll see you around. Feel better.”

Nursey leaves Annie’s with everything weighing him down on his shoulders and an ache in his chest that he just wants to ignore. The words he writes down on his arm that night are dark and heavy and don’t help his mood, so he writes them down on paper and washes his skin before writing again, then washes them again. By the time he climbs into bed, head a storm and heart the shore it’s about to flood, his arm is raw from scrubbing and the Sharpie that rests there bleeds into his skin.

 

* * *

 

_ it's not like the emptiness in my chest _

_ can be filled by something tangible; _

_ something sugar spun and soft _

_ the same kind of feeling _

_ that gives sunsets warmth _

_ i've tried it before, when i was younger _

_ and i was left fragile behind homemade walls _

_ lonelier and colder than i had been _

 

* * *

 

Nursey is fifteen.

Mid terms in Andover are coming up, and while he breezes through classes, he can’t help the itch of concern for his exams. Nothing seems too terribly difficult, and he had gotten through his AP classes in freshman year alright; he can find a cause for worry, but not one for stress. Nursey still piles the library table full of his textbooks and note taking spirals, copying and recopying in his neat handwriting, alternating between pen and highlighter. He might have been an artist, a poet, kind of a scatterbrain, but he liked organization, liked things to be neat. It was easier for him to remember things he would have otherwise forgotten that way.

He’s halfway through color coding his Latin II notes when a stack of books and journals lands on the desk in front of his mess and he looks up, seeing the smiling face of Tate looking down at him. “Well, hello, Nurse,” he teases, grin crooked and pleasant, before he sits in the chair across from him. “Busy working your wordy little brain off?"

“Well, I was,” Nursey says, a smile on his lips that feels at home there, toward the boy in front of him. “Before someone came by and interrupted.”

Tate shrugs, leaning back and starting to open up spirals and books, revealing messy, disorganized writing with glimpses of neon yellow against the white ruled paper. Nursey spots English III and Introduction to Poetry books and eyes them for a moment, before Tate is speaking and he snaps his attention back. “You don’t mind the company, do you?”

Nursey rolls his eyes. “I don’t think I have a choice, do I? From the way you’re settling in?” he asks, propping his elbow up on the table and resting his cheek against his hand, pen nib away from his skin so he doesn’t end up with accidental marks on his face. “I think you’d sit there and taunt me with your literature books and notes and let me suffer with Chemistry and Geometry.”

“Well, we both know you’re going to ace anything that involves the English language without breaking a sweat,” Tate chirps, smile morphing into that teasing smirk he has. “Some of us aren’t as gifted with sonnets and haikus as you.”

“One, I work in free verse, and you know that,” Nursey says, returning the playful smirk with his own. “Two, I don’t even have to take my English exam. My teacher exempted me. I did all that extra credit work when we were studying Shakespeare that she just compiled an average of that and is going to put that as my exam grade.”

Tate chuckles, low, and it sends a shock down Nursey’s spine that makes his cheeks feel hot. “Watch out, world, Nursey is an overachiever in the art of literature,” he says, almost louder than necessary, and Nursey is swatting at him to quiet down. His eyes drop to his arm, where he has Sharpied words up and down his skin, and stops him with a gentle grab of his wrist. “Whoa, what’s this?”

“Some introspective poetry,” Nursey supplies helpfully, lets Tate try to decipher the mess on his arm, before he snorts. “Do you want me to read it to you, since you seem to forget how words work?”

“Fuck off, Nurse,” he says with a laugh, letting go of his arm. “But yeah, what’s it say.”

Nursey smiles, a confidence in his chest. “ _I am too soft for this world, who thinks me steel and diamond, wants me to cut like blades and like glass. I am a gentle night with a quiet breeze, and I do no harm to those around me_ ,” he recites, from memory, because he had written it down only twenty minutes ago, between classes in the hall. He wasn’t sure where it came from, and he didn’t know how to continue it, but he liked it.

“Wow,” Tate mumbles quietly, then cracks a smile. “If you write poetry like that, maybe you are too soft.”

He throws his highlighter at him, and calms his racing heart over the laughter.

 

* * *

 

Dex keeps eying his arm - his right - and glancing up at his face, but he can’t figure out why. It’s been a couple of days since they last saw each other at Annie’s, and Nursey was sure the sharpie had faded enough where no one could see it. They’re sitting in the living room of the Haus, lounging on the couch and sharing the space while they listen to Bitty hum and bake in the kitchen, stuffing their faces into what they need to study. Nursey ignores Dex’s eyes, ignores how it burns where he stares at his skin, ignores how it makes his pulse pick up in his wrist, before Dex is talking. “What does it say?” 

Apparently, it still was visible enough. Nursey lets out an acknowledged sound, looking down at his skin, and shrugging. “It was a poem. No big deal.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Dex snorts, rolling his eyes, before he shifts a bit closer into Nursey’s space. “What did your poem say?”

“I thought you didn’t like poetry, Poindexter,” Nursey chirps, looking up from his journal and over at Dex, a teasing smirk on his lips.

Dex frowns. “I don’t understand poetry,” he corrects. “I like it just fine. I just don’t get all the double meanings and dancing around the point.”

Nursey lets out a snort and turns back to his journal, giving him a moment to steel himself; he didn’t read his poems aloud anymore. It just wasn’t something he did. Tate always played faux interested before he’d tease Nursey for being into something so wishy-washy like literature, and it took months to realize it was why he was slowly hiding his art off from the world. But Dex’s eyes are still staring holes into the side of his face, full of sincere intrigue and something else Nursey can’t place, and it feels like making the same mistakes again, but he sighs. " _Fire burns bright like the sun, and I’ve fallen for blinding rays_ ,” he recites, not looking at Dex while he does. “ _I never considered myself Icarus, until I was crashing into the waves_.”

Dex hums next to him, and he feels him shift away from him on the couch. “I like the kinda rhyme,” he said softly, already typing away on his computer. “It’s nice.”

He doesn’t say anything, before swallowing away the lump in his throat that feels like nervousness and tears. The words to tell him are in his throat, waiting, and he should say them, tell him, because part of him wants to air it out before anything happens, doesn’t want history to repeat itself. Instead, he hums and goes back to his journal. “Thanks.” Another time. Another day.

Nursey pointedly ignores the way he can see Dex’s lips pull into a smile.

 

* * *

 

Nursey is fifteen and it's Christmas.

He would never tell Tate this, he decides, sober, as he sneaks up the stairs to his room with two bottles of schnapps and a bottle of wine from his father’s liquor cabinet under his arm. Everything else looked intimidating, or gross, and Nursey figures if he’s getting drunk alone on Christmas, he’s going to do it with something he can actually stand to taste. His nanny couldn’t make it, as hard as she tried to, and Nursey was used to spending Christmas after Christmas alone, so he had just shrugged it off. He already kind of missed Andover, if he was honest. Missed seeing Tate everyday. The rest of the team were kind of okay, he guessed, but sometimes he caught them making comments that had his skin crawling. He knew it was better to push it down and ignore it, though. At least he had Tate.

His bedroom is spinning by the time he gets a fifth into the bottle, the taste of syrupy sweet alcohol and fruit on his tongue and giggles in his throat as he tries to dial on his phone, scrolling through to find Tate. He shouldn’t tell him, he really shouldn’t. But he was in such a good mood and he missed his best friend. He finally manages to find him, hitting call and letting out soft little laughs as Tate answers. “Yo, Nurse, what’s up?”

“I… I am so drunk,” Nursey giggles into the phone, putting his free hand over his mouth, like that would stop his laughter. He hears Tate shift around on the other end, hearing his muffled voice, before he’s back. “I found… uh, oh, schnapps. Where my dad keeps his alcohol? And they were s’sweet,” he slurs.

“Damn, Nurse, how much did you have?”

Nursey holds the bottle up the best he can, squinting at it in the dim light. “I… I do not know,” he murmurs, then laughs again.

Tate chuckles with him. “So that’s what you’re doing on Christmas, then? Getting drunk at fifteen?”

“W-Well there isn’t anythin’ else to do!” Nursey says, probably too loud, flopping down and frowning into his pillow. Everything is making him dizzy, but he feels nice. “My parents don’t do holidays and my nanny couldn’t make it. S’kay, though. The alcohol and you will keep me company.”

“Mhm,” Tate hums. 

Nursey fights back the feel in his chest that Tate didn’t press him about his parents, and instead hums in return, staring up at his ceiling, counting the chips in the paint, before he starts talking again. “ _Let not my love be called idolatry, nor my beloved as an idol show, since all alike my songs and praises be to one, of one, still such, and ever so,_ ” he mumbled into his phone.

“Wow,” Tate mumbles. “Write that one yourself Nursey?”

“Shakespeare,” he says proudly. “A sonnet. Number one-oh-five.”

Tate laughs on the other side, and Nursey could write novels of poems about how pretty his laugh is, how it makes his chest feel fluttery and makes his stomach do backflips. He smiles into his pillow, eyes drooping already, waiting for Tate to talk. “Wow. A Shakespeare sonnet while you’re drunk. You never cease to amaze me, Nurse.”

Nursey’s smile feels like it’s splitting his cheeks. He doesn’t remember being conscious for long after that, and he wakes up the next morning, his head pounding and his phone flashing next to him.

**_Tate_ ** _ : We should hang out sometime. _ __  
_  
_ **_Tate_ ** __ : Maybe you can recite more drunken Shakespeare at me.

 

* * *

 

_ my lungs feel full of water _

_ and breathing hurts less _

_ than it does to stand silent _

_ in your shadow and crave _

_ to be the light that shines _

_ and makes you glow _

 

* * *

 

“I had a best friend in high school.”

Nursey blurts it out over studying. They’re sitting in Dex’s dorm, Nursey crossed legged on his bed, textbooks in his lap and a pen in his hand, while Dex swiveled back and forth in his chair. At the admittance, Dex turns, giving him a long, confused stare, before looking away. “Um. Congrats?” he says, one corner of his mouth pulled up into a smug grin. “Glad you did, bro.”

“No, no,” Nursey shakes his head, groaning. Eloquence was never going to be his forte when it came to speaking. “I mean, look. I’m trying to… Open up to you. About something.”

“Oh,” Dex says softly, turning back around and glancing everywhere but Nursey, fidgeting awkwardly. “You know, this might be a better topic for Bitty?”

Nursey hesitates, for a moment, before shaking his head again. “No. It’s- I should tell you.” That gets Dex’s full attention, his eyes picking up off the floor and staring at him, and Nursey swallows. “Chowder… He kind of knows but he doesn’t- I didn’t give him real details.”

“Is it hard to talk about?” Dex asks, and Nursey expects his tone to be sarcastic, but it’s not. It’s the exact opposite. Nursey nods and sighs. “You don’t have to tell me anything, Nursey… You know that right? Like… I get it.”

“I should,” he says softly. “Like… I’ve been kind of holding it in for too many years, and it’s been messing me up lately.” He avoids why; he can’t tell Dex just yet. “I just… I don’t know where to start. I’ve never really told anyone about this.”

Dex shifts to get up from his desk chair, pushing Nursey’s books away from him on the bed and sitting next to him, crossing his legs. Their knees bump together and Nursey pretends it doesn’t send a shock down his spine, and that he can’t smell the detergent Dex uses mixing with the cologne he wears. “Well…” he starts, the word rolling off his tongue, before he rests his hands in his lap, looking at Nursey. “Tell me what you told Chowder, and… We can go from there.”

Nursey nods, looking away. “I fucked up when I was fifteen,” he tells him, accents it with a shrug, because he can feel Dex’s eyes on the side of his face, and there’s already a lump in his throat. “I had this best friend who I was head over heels with. His name was Tate. We played hockey together at Andover. He was a year ahead of me in school, but two years older, almost eighteen. That should have been a... “ He waved his hand a bit, trying to find the words. “Red flag. The first one. He was pretty much an adult, and I was only fifteen.”

“Did you-” Dex starts, but stops, and Nursey take a brief glance at his face. He looks horrified at what he might say next, concern for what he has, and Nursey knows him well enough he can see a flicker of anger in his eyes. “Oh God, Nursey did  _ he _ -”

“No,” he answers, quickly, seeing panic in his face. Dex visibly relaxes. Nursey’s heart lurches. “No we… We didn’t. He didn’t. We spent months kinda dancing around each other, you know? Playfully flirting in the locker room and in the halls and during studying time in the library. It must have been unbearable to watch? I don’t think I was really subtle.” He gives himself a pause, but Dex doesn’t say anything. “He was… what I thought was my best friend. I told him about my poetry, let him read some, read him others, about my depression and the medication, even told him I had been playing hockey for a year… I… God I shouldn’t have told him about my parents, about how they weren’t around. I didn’t think it was going to be anything bad? I look back and realize he never really pressed me on any of this? I called him drunk once on Christmas and told him my parents didn’t do holidays, and he just hummed.”

Dex lets out a breath, but Nursey ignores it. “I mean… Call me selfish? I thought I’d get more than that, you know? And I pushed myself into a corner with that, too, because then he asked about the alcohol and if he could come over and I didn’t put two and two together because I was young and stupid, and-” He stops himself, hands shaking on where they had subconsciously moved to his upper arms, gripping the muscle there, mindful of his nails. “Sorry, I-”

“It’s okay,” Dex tells him, and he sounds so gentle and compassionate, Nursey thinks he’s talking to Bitty for a moment, but Bitty doesn’t have a New England accent, and Bitty doesn’t look like fire personified, and he doesn’t have a journal full of poems about being eaten by autumn leaves and flames about Bitty. He dares a glance at him again, finds his brows knitted down together in concern. “You… You don’t have to keep going, Nursey. I-I mean. I want to hear this, if you’re willing to tell me you just… well you look-”

“Un-chill?” Nursey jokes weakly.

Dex offers him a small smile and an eye roll. “I was going to say stressed out,” he says, then rocks awkwardly a moment, before getting up. “We can, um. Continue that conversation when you don’t look on the edge of a breakdown. Let’s go see what Bitty’s baked today.”

Nursey takes his coat from Dex and offers him a smile, getting up off his bed and heading out of the dorm with him, feeling just a touch lighter.

 

* * *

 

_ i shouldn’t compare you to soft sunrises _

_ and the gentle wave of the ocean in the moonlight _

_ or how sleep stirs you slowly awake  _

_ and how warmth fills you inside out on cold winter days _

_ but i never said i wasn't a hopeless romantic _

_ so i am _

 

* * *

 

Nursey is fifteen.

He fiddles with the wide, dark leather bracelet on his left wrist while he sits outside the principal’s office, hearing the raised voice of his nanny inside, coupled with the rushed, frantic voice of the principle. It feels weird being back in Andover, feels like pinpricks of nostalgia coupled with the icy chill of fear, topped off with a lovely dollop of paranoia fueled anxiety. School started the day he got out of the hospital, and he’s missed the first two weeks being back at home, recuperating under blankets on the couch with warm eyes watching him closely, like he was some ticking time bomb, but he guessed it wasn’t too outlandish considering. He hadn’t heard from Tate since that night, no texts, no calls, but braves a look at his Twitter a week after he gets out of the hospital and finds a collection of tweets about a volleyball player with dark hair and green eyes that he hooked up with on his eighteenth birthday and feels so sick he blocks him. No one from hockey bothers to check up on him, and it hardly surprises him. A girl from his English class sends a text halfway through his first week at home, but he never gets a response.

His nanny is arguing about his boarding. Nursey can hear snippets about living at home, about penalizing him for not being back soon like he should have been, but tunes them out because he can feel the drum of stress under his skin. He’s tired, and the cup of coffee he downed on the way out of Manhattan didn’t help his energy, but made his anxiety skyrocket, and he can already picture getting back home and crawling into bed to sleep the day away. 

Nursey’s bouncing his leg and chewing on his nails when a familiar face rounds the corner and their eyes meet, his insides going cold and movements freezing. Tate’s with some of their teammates, and gives him a once over, hands in the pockets of his pressed khaki pants and mouth in a straight line, before he turns his cheek to look at one of group who’s talking. Nursey can see the still healing lines on his face from where his blunt nails had dug in and scratched, and his stomach swoops at the memories of that night, hands moving to his upper arms as they started to shake. Tate doesn’t look at him again, walks past, eyes in the other direction, talking about hook ups and parties and dates, but just as Nursey thought he was safe, he turns to him. “Hope to see you in the locker room again, Nurse,” he says, short, to the point, but there’s an edge there that makes him sick.

The moment Tate’s out of sight, the door to the principal’s office swings open. Nursey’s on his feet, ignoring his nanny’s questions, and sprinting to the bathroom, where he empties his stomach of the coffee he had this morning, then slumps to the tiled floor against the stall door and sobs into his hoodie sleeves.

 

* * *

 

Dex keeps glancing at him during practice. 

Nursey feels dead on his feet, exhaustion weighing him down and a deep ache in his bones that makes moving hard, everything sluggish around the edges. He’s missed a few passes already, couldn’t skate fast enough to stop someone from getting the puck past him, and even spaced out completely at one point, and Bitty ran straight into him. The coaches had yelled at him a few times, but Nursey can’t even remember what they said, can’t really remember Bitty apologizing because he knows he did, but he can remember Dex’s eyes staring right at him the third time Ransom gets past him. Coach Murray calls practice over and everyone starts skating off, Bitty and Jack talking about going to Annie’s for hot chocolate while Shitty butts into their plans, while Ransom and Holster talk studying and Chowder excitedly tells Lardo about his date with Farmer. Nursey’s lazily making his way out, when there’s a hand on his chest stopping him, Dex’s eyes intense. “Dude,” he says, but it lacks the bite it normally has when Nursey’s fucked up during practice. No one seems to be paying them much attention, as far as Nursey can tell. “Something up?”

“No, just-” Nursey stops when Dex’s brow furrows, and tightens his hand on his stick. “I’m-”

“Nurse, Poindexter, off the ice,” Coach Hall yells at them from where he’s looking at Lardo’s clipboard while she talks with Chowder on the bench.

Dex straightens up a bit and his hand moves away from Nursey’s chest. “Sorry, coach,” he says, then glances at Nursey and nods off the ice, so he follows him, sits next to him on the bench in silence as they pull off their skates and head back to get changed. The locker room is as noisy and chaotic as normal, but it makes Nursey feel out of place, skin crawling. Dex eyes him a moment, before gently (when has Dex been gentle?) nudging him toward his stall. “Get out of your gear and we’ll walk back to the dorms together.”

“I can walk myself,” Nursey says, and there should be a snap behind it, but there’s not. It comes out quiet and tired.

“Yeah. But I don’t want you to,” Dex tells him, before turning to start peeling off his gear and stuffing things into his bag. Nursey watches him for a second, before starting to do the same, grabbing his binder from his bag and disappearing back into the showers to swap out his sports bra for it. When he comes back, Dex is sitting at his stall wearing his blue plaid under his dark brown coat, scrolling through something on his phone. He looks up as Nursey stuffs his jersey and sports bra into his bag, before pulling out a clean shirt. He pulls it on and slips into a pair of sweatpants with the hockey logo on the right thigh, then shrugs into his coat. “Ready to go?” Dex asks, locking his phone and smiling at him. Nursey tries to ignore how nice he looks when he smiles.

“Almost,” Nursey mumbles back, sitting in his stall and pulling on his shoes. “You didn’t have to wait, you know. I can walk myself back.”

Dex snorts. “Yeah, you’re seriously off right now, Nurse. I’m not letting you walk back alone,” he says, like it's the most obvious thing, and stands, grabbing his bag and resting the strap on his shoulder. “Besides, we’re in the same building.”

Nursey wants to argue, because his brain is buzzing too much to wrap around what Dex means by off, and because Dex’s almost gentle approach to him since practice started earlier has been making him uncomfortable, if only because it’s so unlike him. But he’s tired, and the ache in his body has only gotten worse, and he’d rather be back at his dorm where he can curl up under his thick, dark blankets and forget the world even exists for a few hours, even if that world included Dex. He shrugs in response and stands, grabbing his things. They leave the locker room with Dex’s voice telling the team they’d see them later, then push the double doors open to the cold winter outside of Faber. Nursey lets out a shiver while Dex zips his coat, then they start toward their dorm building. “You still didn’t have to do this,” Nursey says, stuffing his hands in his pockets and trying to ignore the tingling numbness in his fingers.

“If I have to repeat myself again, I’m pushing you into the snowbank,” Dex bites back. “You’ve been acting weird all day. You didn’t even seem excited for breakfast at the Haus this morning. And Bitty made your favorite kind of pancakes.” They fall into silence after the admittance, shoes crunching against slush and snow on the concrete, and Nursey feels Dex’s eyes on him, watching him, trying to piece the day together. “You’re even being quiet now, and that’s so-”

“Dex, I’m mentally and physically tired, can we drop this?” Nursey says, without thinking, immediately feeling a wave of nausea hit him.

It throws off Dex’s step though, stuttering a bit, before he catches back up and rights himself. “Oh. I mean, yeah, of course,” he mumbles. Nursey glances at him; he’s not looking at him now, hand tight on his hockey bag. “Mid terms have been kind of kicking everyone’s asses, so I get it.”

Their steps sync, and Nursey goes quiet, turning his attention off Dex at his shoes. The dorms aren’t much longer after that, and Nursey feels his shoulder fall as they step into the warm building, kicking snow and ice off their shoes. There aren’t many people around, a couple of students curled up on the couches under blankets with their laptops, at most, and Nursey’s heart lurches thinking about his empty, lonely dorm, listening to static and white noise for hours before he’d be able to go to sleep. Dex gives him a look, before rolling his shoulder a bit. “I’ll see you around?”

Fear takes over his chest for a moment. “No, uh,” he stutters. Dex stops his half step back, wrinkling his face. No one moves from the couches. “I… I’m…” he tries to say, feels his throat stick around his words when he swallows. “I… Don’t think I should be on my own tonight.” It’s the first time he’s ever voiced that concern, and the sudden anxiety that jumps into his throat is unfamiliar and makes him clench his fists in his pockets. 

Dex doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move, just stares at him, almost confused, before he comes back to his senses. “Oh. Okay, yeah. Uh. Come with me back to my dorm so I can grab some stuff? I don’t mind crashing on your floor.”

Nursey ponders what happened the Dex he had gotten used to in the past few months, who would have scoffed and refused had Nursey suggested this. He wonders why Dex was being so nice to him now. It was weird, and made Nursey feel way too fragile and way too vulnerable, but at the same time, it left a warmth in his chest that he hadn’t properly felt since Tate, before that all blew up in his face. He watches Dex mumble to himself about having to do homework while he packs up an empty backpack with his things. He doesn’t have class until late in the afternoon, so he’s not worried about his school stuff. When he’s done, they lock up and head up to Nursey’s  dorm two floor above, going into the pitch black, silent room while Nursey fiddles with the light. He’s grateful he was up to cleaning the night before, although he has a pile of journals and notes sitting on his desk. His roommate’s side is neat, and empty, barely looks lived in, and Nursey drops his stuff onto his floor, turning on the string lights hanging up around his bed, before he collapses into it. “There’s extra blankets and pillows in the closet,” he tells Dex, watching him set his stuff in the corner, trying to be out of the way and neat. “And… Thanks for staying with me tonight.”

“Don’t mention it,” he says, going to his closet and grabbing the extra stuff inside, before laying it out on the floor for a makeshift bed. Dex sighs and goes to slip off his shoes, eying Nursey. “Are you still wearing your binder?”

Nursey sits up, huffing and pulling off his shirt, before stopping before he tugged his binder up. “Can you-”

“Oh.” Dex turns, tips of his ears starting to turn red. Nursey doesn’t think about it, and pulls his binder off and tosses it onto his desk, before slipping back into his shirt. He settles back down into his bed, pulling his comforter over himself as Dex turns back, flipping the main light off and dropping to lay down on his pile of blankets. They go quiet, just the distant hum of the heater and an occasional slamming of a door muffled in the distance. Nursey shifts, arm falling off the side of his bed, curling slightly and just barely able to see Dex’s fiery red hair in the soft lighting. “I’m still awake. If you’re wondering.”

Nursey doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t say anything for a moment, before he curls his fist a bit more. “I tried to kill myself when I was fifteen.” Dex shifts and there’s horror on his face when he looks up at him, colors in his face and hair muted, but his eyes bright. His eyebrows press together in concern. “I… I don’t get like that. Not anymore. But it’s just… Today’s been… well, today,” he tells him gently. Dex doesn’t interrupt. “I’m not trying to say this so you’ll be constantly concerned about me, but… After today I didn’t trust myself to be alone. It’s always a nagging feeling under my skin when I get like this.”

“Have you…” Dex says softly. Nursey meets his eyes, and there’s a worry there in his face that leaves him breathless. “Tried? Since then?”

“No,” Nursey tells him. “I haven’t.” Dex visibly relaxes, and Nursey tugs at the dark leather band on his wrist until the clasp unfastens, shifts to sit up and hold it out. Dex mirrors him, moving to look at him. “I didn’t really… It wasn’t a conscious decision. And I felt like shit for weeks after. I don’t really want to relive that feeling, you know?”

Dex nods. His hand reaches out and takes Nursey’s wrist, his thumb rubs over the worst scar, the one Nursey tries to hide the most, and he takes a breath. “Yeah… I… God, Derek,” he says, and the way his accent rolls over his name sends a warm jolt to his stomach, his cheeks so hot he was sure he was red by now. He’s glad for the darkness. “I didn’t know.”

“I didn’t tell you,” Nursey says. “I haven’t really told anyone. Well. C sort of knows but-”

“No, I mean I didn’t-” Dex backtracks, dropping Nursey’s wrist. “I thought you were just some spoiled rich kid. I never imagined you… Dealt with this.”

“Depression doesn’t give a shit about your bank account,” he mumbles. He pulls his wrist back and puts his leather band back on, ignoring how Dex’s eyes stay trained on him the entire time. “I’m doing better. Pills help. Not being in Andover, or in my parents’ empty apartment helps. Samwell helps.”  _ “You help _ ,” goes unsaid.

Dex hums and sighs. “I’m sorry,” he tells him softly. “About your parents being pieces of shit. About your depression. About whatever pushed you to do that. And I’m sorry for… just assuming you were another privileged rich kid. I was really wrong, Nursey. You aren’t.”

That’s where the comparisons to Tate vanish. Dex’s eyes are sincere up at him, eyebrows furrowed down just enough to make his entire face glow with concern, and Nursey still feels the ghost touch of his thumb over his scar. “It’s okay, Dex,” he tells him. “You’ve been apologizing with your actions a lot lately, so it’s c-... okay.”

His shoulders fall a bit and he gives him a small smile. “Thanks,” he tells him. “Let’s get some sleep. You probably need it.”   
  
“Yeah, no shit,” Nursey murmurs, laying back down and snorting. He hears Dex shift around on the floor and get comfortable. A door slams in the distance, and he swallows down his nerves. “I’ll… I’ll tell you about all that happened, Dex. You deserve to know.”

“Take your time,” Dex mumbles back, his voice heavy with sleep. “That shit isn’t easy.”

“Yeah,” Nursey says softly back, hears Dex’s breathing even out as he falls asleep. “I wish it was.”

 

* * *

 

_ you burn so bright and so hot _

_ that my gentle swaying grass _

_ is a raging fire under soft white clouds _

_ and a bright blue sky _

  
  


_ i have never been so happy to be aflame _

 

* * *

 

Nursey stares Dex down across the table at Annie’s. The shop is empty today, people starting to finish up exams and pack up for a few weeks back at home, leaving a gentle lull of the machines and the soft chatter of the two employees talking over coffee. Today is the day he’s gonna tell him, and despite telling himself that over and over, he can’t find the normal swirl of nerves in his stomach. Dex has his nose in his engineering work, before he glances up, making a face. “Dude, have you just been staring at me?”

“His name was Tate,” Nursey says. The look on Dex’s face vanishes and he sets his pencil down. “We played hockey together in Andover and he was two years older than me. He was my best friend. I was head over heels for him, but he was dismissive of my poetry, my love for literature, my home life, my depression. I don’t know why I liked him as much as I did, but... We never had sex. Consensual or not. But there was one time we got close… Well… God, he got close.” Nursey braves a look at Dex. He looks a bit paler than normal, a fire burning at the back of his eyes. “I was fifteen. He was turning eighteen in days. I invited him over to hang out while my nanny was gone, and it took all of ten minutes before he asked about my dad’s alcohol. We got into it, because I knew where the key was, and we drank. Well. I drank. He had less bottle passes than I did, a-and I’m a lightweight-”

“Nursey, you don’t have to-”

“I want to,” Nursey says. He hasn’t aired this out. He has to air this out. Dex deserves to know. He takes a steady breath. “I was pretty drunk, too drunk to remember that you don’t mix alcohol with antidepressants. Too drunk to think about how bad the situation was when he asked if we should fool around. I didn’t even answer before he kissed me, and I pushed back every little red flag telling me this was not something I should let happen because I didn’t have any other friends, I didn’t have my parents, I felt so… starved? Of affection of any kind. But then… He crossed the line I didn’t know I had and…” He replays it in his head. The way his body tensed, how he felt sick, the way Tate looked; less like a friend and more like a predator about to pounce on its prey. “I told him no, that I didn’t want that. I told him I was a guy, I told him I was trans. He… He… Well it ended with me slapping him across the face to push him off. He had scratches down his cheek and he was so angry. He called me a freak and left.”

“Derek holy… fuck.”

“After he left, I… I guess the alcohol finally hit and I had a breakdown in the bathroom. I remember crying so hard I couldn’t breathe and then I woke up in the hospital with my entire left arm bandaged and my nanny crying at my bedside. I had to play hockey with him for another year. He showed his transphobic colors after that, and I didn’t… Well. I don’t remember a whole lot between graduating and starting here,” Nursey says, staring down at the way his hands wring over his journal, over the half assed poetry on the page. Now came the scary part. “I’m not telling you because… I don’t want you to look at me any different. It’s because I… I started seeing a lot of the same patterns in myself with you as I did with Tate, and I was starting to psyche myself out about it but-”

“Nurse-”

“You’re nothing like him,” he says, ignoring whatever Dex was about to say. If he didn’t say this now, he would lock it up and only let it out in poetry Dex would never read, and eventually, one day, it would fuck up whatever friendship they had. He didn’t want that to happen. “You’re nothing like Tate, Dex. You actually give a shit. About my poetry, even if you don’t get it, about my parents and depression, about… me. You’re an abrasive asshole, and you drive me up the wall sometimes, and I spent most of this semester thinking one day we were gonna end up killing each other-”

“Nursey, will you _shut up_.”

Nursey looks up quickly, heart hammering in his chest, but Dex doesn’t look annoyed, or angry, or grossed out. He’s got that asshole smirk on his face, before it softens. “You’re losing the meaning in your rambling.”

“ _Oh_.”

Dex closes his binder, starting to gather his pens and highlighters. “I get what you’re trying to say. Let’s go get dinner tonight? And by dinner I mean we can order a pizza and then sit in your dorm and watch shitty movies and laugh ourselves unconscious.”

His mouth feels like cotton, so he nods, face surely red and Dex laughs, a sound so pretty Nursey’s sure he won’t be able to stand up his knees are so weak. “Y-Yeah,” he stutters. “Yeah. Let’s do that. That’s good. Great.”

“Ever eloquent,” Dex chirps, standing up. “I gotta get to my engineering exam. I’ll text you after, okay? Try not to slip and fall into a snowbank somewhere.”

“Yeah.”

Nursey watches him leave with a jingle of the bell on the door, mouth hanging open and cheeks slowly fading to pink, before he lifts his arms into the air and yells, chair tipping back and falling to the tiled floor of Annie’s.

 

* * *

 

_**Nursey** : that flower is gay _

_**Nursey** : that card is gay _

_**Nursey** : youre gay _

_**Dex** : Glad to see your surgery went well. _

_**Dex** : And Derek we’re dating. _

_**Nursey** : they gave me some really strong painkillers _

_**Nursey** : and william youre still gay  _

_**Dex** : Yeah. _

_**Dex** : Love you too, though. _

**Author's Note:**

> if you want to follow me just to see what i'm doing (or to chat bcus i like making friends), you can [follow me here on twitter!](https://twitter.com/milessqueak)
> 
> shout out to my friend amber for beta-ing this! amber can be found [on tumblr](https://wifeofsera.tumblr.com/) and [on twitter!](https://twitter.com/areyouamburrsir)


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